Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The first-year report card of the Punjab Right to Service Act is out. In one year whole of 2012 of its implementation,the government has received more than 70 lakh applications for various services to be processed through the Act. According to the Punjab Right to Service Commission the appeal and monitoring agency for the Act out of this,almost 40,000 applications could not be processed in time. This is a little more than 0.5 per cent of the total number of applications.
The appeal system under the Act,however,is yet to take off. The Commission has received and disposed of only eight revision appeals in 2012. Another eight appeals have been filed before various deputy commissioners (second appellant authority under the Act) by unsatisfied applicants. While disposing these of,the DCs have penalised five officials,including an SDM and a tehsildar. Another 600 appeals have been filed before the first appellant authority,which is the SDM. Majority of these have been resolved.
Commission Chairman S C Aggarwal said on an average,7 to 7.5 lakh applications were being processed each month and at any given point in time,the pendency was 50,000 on an average. These are those applications,which are yet to be processed within the given time frame. We still do not have a system through which we can monitor the number of applications that have not been dealt with at all for each month. But we are working on a real time monitoring system for next year, said Aggarwal.
In January 2013,more than 7.3 lakh applications were processed. Out of these,6.3 lakh were applications of civil services alone. The rest were applications for the police services. Among the civil services,over 1.6 lakh were applications for certified copies of girdawri,mutation etc. There was no pendency for these applications and the services were provided on the same day.
Moreover,while over 65,000 applications in regard to issuing of driving licenses,over 11,000 are pending. The main reason of the pendency was acute shortage of staff in the transport department, said Aggarwal. Another 40,000 applications were for issue of ration cards,very few of which are pending.
Among police services,the highest number of applications received dealt with passport verification (over 39,000) followed by demand for copy of FIRs. While there is no pendency in giving copies of FIRs,the passport verification process had over 10,000 applications pending.
The highest number of applications have been received from Ludhiana,followed by Amritsar,Mohali and Patiala.
Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
